1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a card conveyance control method and apparatus for conveying optical and other cards, and more particularly to a card conveyance control method and apparatus for ensuring that a card is properly mounted on a conveyer in a card conveying system comprising a first conveyer unit for conveying a card held by a plurality of conveying rollers, and a second conveyer unit that has a conveying platform for mounting thereon the card conveyed from the first conveyer unit and conveys the card by moving the conveying platform.
2. Description of the Related Art
Optical cards carrying optical recording media or cards combining such optical recording media with other recording media, such as magnetic recordings, IC (integrated circuit) recordings, or the like have recently been proposed for use as bank cards and various other cards.
Such optical cards carrying optical recording media have the following advantages:
1) the information storage capacity is much larger than that achieved with conventional magnetic cards, IC cards, or the like, and PA1 2) it is difficult to falsify data because of its physical recording method by means of forming the recording pits on the media. PA1 the conveying rollers of the first conveyer unit are rotated in the conveying direction of the card, and the conveying platform of the second conveyer unit is moved in the direction of the first conveyer unit so as to press the leading edge of the card conveyed from the first conveyer unit against the back edge of the conveying platform, and the conveying platform of the second conveyer unit is then moved in the opposite direction from the first conveyer unit.
With such card reader/writer apparatus for writing and reading data onto and from such optical and other cards, it has been proposed to use a structure that comprises a first conveyer unit for conveying a card held by a plurality of conveying rollers, and a second conveyer unit equipped with a conveying platform for mounting the card conveyed from the first conveyer unit, and conveying the card by moving the platform, wherein the data can be written and read in a stable manner by being written onto or read from the card by means of an optical head or the like while the card remains mounted on the conveying platform of the second conveyer unit.
With the above-described structure for writing and reading data onto and from the card mounted on the conveying platform of the second conveyer unit, a prerequisite is that the card conveyed from the first conveyer unit is mounted at the proper position on the conveying platform of the second conveyer unit. But the conventional apparatus have the problems that it is difficult to write and read data when the card conveyed from the first conveyer unit is not mounted at the proper position on the conveying platform of the second conveyer unit.